Steve Denning, world expert on leadership, innovation, business narrative and organizational ttorytelling

 

 

Read the reviews from around the world

"If business leaders do not immediately grasp the vital insights offered by this book,
both they and their organisations are doomed." Financial Times

Secret Language

Awards: Selected in Best Books of 2007

On December 8, 2007, the Financial Times selected The Secret Language of Leadership as #2 in its list of the Best Business Books of 2007.

In January 2008, 800_CEO_READ selected The Secret Language of Leadership as the best book on leadership in 2007.

UK: Financial Times 29 August 2007

Book review: Let me tell you a story about Al Gore

By Stefan Stern

If business leaders do not immediately grasp the vital insights offered by this book, both they and their organisations are doomed. But the good news is that there are examples of executives out there who have taken this book’s messages to heart, and have acted successfully on them.

Got your attention? That opening paragraph was a ham-fisted attempt to put some of Stephen Denning’s theories into practice. Leaders who want their businesses to embrace change, he says, must first get the attention of the people who matter. Negative messages (or bad news) tend to attract people’s attention more effectively than good news.

But bad news alone might just be depressing. Hence the need for the second sentence of this review. The desire for change must be stimulated, Denning argues, by holding out the prospect that a better world can be and indeed already is being created.

This new book is Denning’s latest attempt to explain why storytelling – or “narrative” – has such an important role in leadership. In the past few years he has written of the need for “springboard” stories – the sort of tale that can spark a reaction even among jaded and cynical audiences. He wrote an extended parable, published in 2004, about a community of squirrels, and the way in which powerful storytelling saved them from disaster.

This new book represents a considerable advance on the earlier work. The squirrels have been superseded by an intelligent and sustained analysis of the art of contemporary leadership. Those bosses who quietly despair of ever getting their people to change should spend a bit of time learning how to speak Denning’s “secret language”.

One leader who does seem to have got the message is former US vice-president Al Gore. In a superb opening section, Denning takes Gore’s lousy presidential bid of 2000 apart, showing how at each stage the man of destiny from Tennessee blew his chances.

The author describes 10 ways in which candidate Gore failed the test of leadership. His campaign was confusing and uninspiring, Denning says. He lacked commitment. His body language sucked. He misread his audience. He lacked “narrative intelligence” – in other words, Gore just couldn’t tell a story that people wanted to hear.

He did not talk straight, unlike the apparently much more direct Governor George W. Bush. He lost people’s attention, if he ever had it. He campaigned as the candidate of change, but failed to get people interested in the sort of change he was promoting. His supposed strengths came across as weaknesses. And, in the end, every attempt to establish a dialogue with the electorate failed.
“Fast-forward to 2006, and what do we see?” Denning asks. “Millions of people have paid more than $40m to watch a movie of Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation. And Gore’s live talks enjoy the response of a rock star.”

What has changed? “In his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore conveys a passion for a subject he cares deeply about,” Denning explains. “Now he isn’t merely repeating what his political managers or handlers have told him to say...it also helps that he has learnt not to take himself so seriously in his public speeches and is able to poke gentle fun at himself. Even more important, the Al Gore of 2006 has abandoned speaking in a tangle of complex abstractions and used appropriate narratives.”

Denning is a subtle and astute reader of audiences’ minds. Don’t try to out-reason deeply sceptical employees, he says. You have to make a personal – and emotional – connection with them first. Indeed, facts may be the last thing people want to hear right now. They will simply be discounted and rejected.

Of course, there is still a need for reasoned arguments, he says, but it is crucial to get the “sequencing” of messages right. Get people’s attention, “stimulate the desire for change”, and then wheel out the rationale.

“Leadership communications begin as monologue,” Denning says. “If they are successful they turn into dialogue and then conversation. The conversation emerges because of the enduring enthusiasm for change that has been inspired.”

Some business leaders may be sceptical about the need for language skills these days, but this “secret language of leadership” will reward further study.
.......................
The Secret Language of Leadership: How leaders inspire action through narrative
By Stephen Denning
Jossey-Bass Wiley £15.99, $27.95
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1/be0a73ee-563c-11dc-ab9c-0000779fd2ac.html

USA: North Carolina Business Journal October 19, 2007

The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative

By Stephen Denning

Are you a small business owner who struggles with inspiring your employees? No matter how hard you try or how passionate you are, you just can't get your team to buy into your message? Denning, a senior fellow at the James MacGregor Burns Leadership Academy at the University of Maryland, says he can show you the way into your employees' hearts and minds. The key is a concept he calls narrative intelligence, which involves knowing how to tell your story in a way that produces the desired response in your audience - in this case, your employees.

Hardcover, 304 pages, Jossey-Bass, $27.95

UK: Inside Knowledge October 2007

The Secret Language of Leadership

Author: Stephen Denning

Publisher: Jossey-Bass ISBN: 0787987891 Price: $27.95
Review by Graeme Burton

When Howell Raines took over as executive editor of the New York Times on 5 September 2001, he had a blueprint for change that he planned to pursue aggressively. Staff were lazy and set in their ways, he believed, and needed shaking up. It may make many feel uncomfortable, but the venerable and well-respected newspaper needed to be quicker with the news, to publish harder-hitting stories and to sharpen its writing – or risk eclipse.

He was no outsider, either, but a two-decade veteran of the organisation who had enjoyed the strong backing of his boss, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr, who endorsed his strategy.

And he had the Summer of 2001 to prepare for his leadership role, too, arranging breakfast and lunch meetings with staff and managers, while lining up the appointments he wished to make come September, particularly from among staff who shared his view that the newspaper needed to provide “more, better, faster”.

Within a week, of course, Raines’ new strategy of covering big stories with “overwhelming force” was tested with the 9/11 tragedy, and it passed with distinction: the newspaper won universal recognition for the way that it had handled the story.

Yet less than two years later, Raines was deposed after a fast-rising young reporter called Jayson Blair, who had epitomised the Raines era, was sacked after it was found that many of his stories had been made up or plagiarised.

Why did Raines fail his test of leadership?

Denning lists many shortcomings, but principal among them was the fact that he failed to stimulate a desire for change among staff and managers. As a result, the newsroom became a warzone, change became harder to achieve, not easier, and in the first big test of his management he was forced to follow the shamed reporter out the door.

“Raines was unable to communicate to the managers and staff why their lives as journalists would be better if they started to conduct themselves differently,” concludes Denning. What he failed to realise is that the traditional tools of management are often not conducive to transformational leadership.

For example, traditional managers expect to give instructions and be obeyed. Yet Raines’ orders were perceived as interference and resented by the recipients. Likewise, he was criticised for staying in his corner office and failing to engage staff on a regular basis. True, he did hold regular morning meetings, but the area they were held was labelled the ‘DMZ’ – the demilitarised zone – indicating that something had gone very seriously wrong with the corporate culture.

“The attributes of hierarchical leaders – ordering, assigning office space, hiring, firing, offering incentives and disincentives – don’t necessarily help leaders to connect with people and do the most important thing that genuine leaders have to do: instil in people the sustained desire to do something fundamentally different,” writes Denning.

And Raines was asking staff to make very big changes in their everyday working practices, to break out of their familiar routines and to do their jobs very differently.

Once upon a time, Raines’ approach would have been accepted. But in the peculiar atmosphere of a US newspaper’s newsroom a manager seeking far-reaching change needed to be a persuasive communicator. “Raines’ communications with his staff were mainly one-way tellings, rather than two-way conversations,” writes Denning.

For example, during the lunches he held with staff in the Summer of 2001 before he finally took over, he paid little heed to the fact that his guests didn’t say much, which should have been a warning sign that he was not winning their buy-in to his vision.

Successful leaders have always needed to be good communicators, to inspire. But never more so than today, even in quite humdrum leadership positions, given the near-permanent state of corporate change that we all live in these days. The Secret Language of Leadership, naturally enough for a book from Stephen Denning, champions the importance of business narrative.

But it goes much further, putting the language of leadership into context: management is one thing, but leadership is quite another. Denning, however, dissects the subject in an engaging manner, bringing in all kinds of stories (as you would expect) to illustrate his many points, providing an educational and informative book that can be effortlessly read from cover to cover.

Graeme Burton is the managing editor of Inside Knowledge. He can be contacted by e-mailing gburton@ark-group.com.

http://www.ikmagazine.com/display.asp?articleid=4DBF8C89-A2DA-4203-9DA3-C9C1AC92F08A

Australia: Sydney Morning Herald: November 26, 2007

Storytelling the secret to happy ending

Sydney Morning Herald November 26, 2007

Arthur Sinodinos was John Howard's chief of staff, and was at his side for four winning election campaigns. He explains how Labor was able to steal this election.

AUSTRALIA in 2007 is a paradox. Most people believe the country is heading in the right direction. Economic times are good, the outgoing Government retained strong credentials on economic management and national security and was led by a prime minister who retained remarkably high ratings.

So why did the Coalition lose? It was outflanked by a sophisticated campaign that drew on overseas techniques and the resources of a galvanised trade union movement. Recently, Stephen Denning, the author of The Secret Language Of Leadership, was in Sydney.

His thesis is that the art of successful leadership requires the ability to tell a story. The story is the vehicle for establishing a personal and emotional connection between the speaker and his audience. Rational argument will not win people over. The speaker must get their attention, stimulate the desire for change and then reinforce it with rational argument. His solutions must be plausible and involve a happy ending.

Kevin Rudd's campaign was successful in crafting such a narrative. First, he got the audience's attention because he was new. This allowed him to play the future card and frame the Coalition as backward-looking. He went on the front foot and used climate change and broadband to champion his future credentials.

Second, he stimulated a desire for change. He knew he had to deflect attention from the booming economy. He sought to argue we were squandering the proceeds of growth while neglecting the strains on working families.

His mantra was that he had a plan to deal with these issues: sign Kyoto, an education revolution, roll out broadband and abolish Work Choices. He promised a petrol commissioner and an inquiry into grocery prices. He framed his responses in the language of the kitchen table. He established a personal connection with the electorate. No amount of facts and figures was going to overcome the empathy factor.

Rudd benefited from the clever ACTU advertising campaign mounted against Work Choices. It was emotional and pushed the buttons of working families under financial pressure and struggling with work-life balance.

Essential Media in Melbourne was responsible for the campaign, which drew on the work of Democrat pollsters in the United States. The Democrats have become adept at exploiting the insecurities of working-class voters in the US.

These pollsters acknowledge the superior macro-economic credentials of the Republicans but frame the economic question differently: who is best able to manage the economy in the interest of working families?

Translated to Australia, this campaign became the basis for promoting more intervention in the labour market and for a relentless focus on the mantra of working families when explaining Labor policy. Rudd was able to proclaim himself an economic conservative at the macro level and pro-family at the micro level.

He also tapped into the happiness agenda that is now fashionable in some quarters - an agenda that gives primacy to the quality of relationships and work-life balance as determinants of human happiness.

With strong discipline in sticking to his core messages, Rudd was able to define himself in the public mind. Previously, the Coalition had been able to define its opponents. The Coalition strategy was to neutralise the issues Rudd was raising and seek to steer public debate back to its strengths.

Rudd reacted by proclaiming his sound economic and national security credentials and matching Coalition promises in many other areas, hence the "me too" tag. Even his physical appearance, reminding voters of a younger Howard, sent a subliminal message.

The ALP ran a very disciplined election campaign and Rudd stuck to his mantra about working families and sought to gain momentum by fleshing out his plans for government. He had a very good media operation that sanitised his press encounters with a focus on sound bites and soft pictures, particularly with school children.

Did the voters stop listening to the Coalition? There were suggestions that voters picked up on individual Coalition issues but it was too late. Barring a last-minute Labor hiccup, the voters had established a connection with Rudd that was hard to shake.

The challenge for the Coalition is twofold. The new government must be held accountable for its promises. While it comes into government with much goodwill, expectations have been raised sky-high in many areas.

Peter Costello's comment yesterday that the new government would now be accountable for every public hospital in the country reflects this reality. It must meet many significant promises while cutting spending and keeping a lid on inflation. Governing the country is always much harder than winning a campaign.

Second, the Coalition must be ruthlessly honest about the reasons for its loss. This is not a witch-hunt but a plea to focus on how to re-establish its connection with the electorate. Promoting a broadly based party that is focused on reclaiming the great centre of Australian politics is a prerequisite. There must be a focus on listening to the concerns of electors rather than engagement in factional jockeying.
It does not mean junking Liberal values. The challenge is how we apply those values to meet the changing concerns of Australians.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/storytelling-the-secret-to-happy-ending/2007/11/25/1195975870812.html

India: The Hindu December 1, 2007

Leaders should narrate true stories

D.Murali

December 1, 2007
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/004200712011653.htm

Chennai: Transformational leaders, in whatever sphere they are in, “change the world by generating enduring enthusiasm for a common cause,” writes Stephen Denning in ‘The Secret Language of Leadership’ (www.josseybass.com). Such leaders “present innovative solutions to solve significant problems. They catalyse shifts in people’s values and ideologies.”

But how do they do all this? “Successful leaders communicate very differently from the traditional, abstract approach to communication,” finds Denning. “In all kinds of settings, they communicate by following a hidden pattern: first, they get attention. Then they stimulate desire, and only then do they reinforce with reasons.” Implementing thus, they co-create the future along with their followers, by continuing the conversation…

Words alone won’t work, the author says. You need the right conditions in the form of enablers like “a truthful commitment to a clear, inspiring change idea that is illuminated by narrative intelligence, and appropriate body language”

Denning urges leaders to cultivate ‘narrative intelligence’ as a key capability, because of the pervasive role that stories play. “Recognition of the foundational role of narrative in human behaviour has been the subject of a rapidly growing body of psychological research,” he informs. Studies have shown that stories are more effective than analytic reasons at persuasion!

However, if narrative intelligence has to work, it has to be based on truthfulness, Denning cautions. “Being a leader entails first making a commitment to truth and authenticity, eliminating any untruthfulness inside the firm as well as outside.”

He foresees a rapidly growing need for leadership, ‘caused by the convergence of irresistible socio-economic forces.’ The ability to get results in the face of myriad challenges of the current century will depend at least as much on leadership as on management, says Denning. “It will depend on a capacity to inspire enduring enthusiasm in people over whom we have no hierarchical control.”

Imperative read.

NZ: The Press: December 3, 2007

Feeling the way to leadership

Business leadership gurus pitching how-to secrets typically conjure images of the pin-striped, chest- puffed, handshake-of-steel variety. So to walk into one of Stephen Denning's seminars, it is easy to think you are in the wrong place. AMANDA MORRALL reports.


The diminutive, bespectacled, former World Bank director looks more Woody Allen than Donald Trump and, at times, you find yourself straining to hear what he is on about.

But just as your attention starts to drift, Denning's alter- ego pounces – seemingly from nowhere like a crouching tiger in the tall grass – and bang! Just like that, your wandering mind is recaptured.

His booming baritone second voice, which he slips in and out of to drive home a point or to grab his audience by the collar, is one of the narrative tools he uses – and sells – as the "secret" key to effective leadership.

And at a recent seminar on leadership in Christchurch, the retirement-aged American proved his point that you do not necessarily have be a Gucci-clad shark to get your way in business.

"Look at Gandhi, probably the most charismatic leader of the 20th century. He was a little runt of a man physically and he was the ugliest man in the world. Unable to speak, unable to connect, he had none of the natural leadership qualities but he eventually found his voice," says a soft-spoken Denning, a wry grin creeping across his face.

Contrary to popular wisdom that one is either a born leader or a born follower, Denning maintains that everyone has leadership potential – you just have to tap into it. "It's not about people who have special, unusual talents, it's not even about extraordinary people, these are ordinary people who have learned how to talk in a different, technical way.

"Once you've deciphered the different way of talking, then anybody can become a leader," he says confidently.

The secret to bending the ear of the business world and ultimately getting your way?
Storytelling. Not the conventional literary kind mind you, but a reformatted, made- for-business version which Denning spells out in his latest book, The Secret Language of Language.

The story Denning tells, and sells, most effectively is how he went from hero to zero overnight at the World Bank then clawed his way back to the lion's den – ostensibly through the power of the spoken word.

"In 1996, I was a desperate man," he says. That was the year Denning lost his job as director of the Africa region for the World Bank and was shuffled off to "Siberia".

Lesson No. 1: Tell your audience something sad to catch their attention to gain empathy.
No longer able to trade on his previously bankable left- brain, analytical, Ivy League school ways – but determined not to be defeated – Denning went back to the drawing board.

It is a twisty tale, but Denning ended up finding a latent talent for storytelling. He says the art of narrative helped him to transform the World Bank's largely ignored information department into a powerhouse of international knowledge sharing.

His role in transforming the department was the launching pad for an unexpected and late- breaking career change as a leadership guru.

Lesson No. 2: Give your audience something to feel good about.

"My role was to communicate what the World Bank was doing to the outside world and as I was getting more requests to talk about what they were doing, the World Bank was seeing less and less of me."

Eventually, he says, businesses started seeking him out – not for his interest in the World Bank's activities – but to find out how he was able to convince the bigwigs there to try something new.

The prestigious Harvard Business Press Review soon caught wind of this, which led to a book offer.
It was not until Denning sat down to write it out that he fully understood the genius of his new approach and why it was working so well in business.

"When I started teaching other people how to do it, that's when I discovered how I was doing it. Because what I thought I was doing was not what I was doing at all."

If his success sounds more serendipitous than stealthy, Denning will not dispute it.

He says most leaders fall into leadership roles unwittingly, reinforcing his argument that you do not have to be commanding the troops at the creche to end up at the top of the corporate ladder later in life.

"Studies have been done and the characteristics of leadership people is that they do tend to be unassuming. The people that come on bristling with weapons and swords and stuff like that they end up like people like Howell Raines (an ousted New York Times executive editor). They get people's back up, they don't inspire."

Denning tells his audiences that good old-fashioned reasoning – with bosses, clients and business audiences – for anything other than conveying simple information is useless.

Research, he says, shows that the human brain is inherently prejudicial about information and ideas, and that basically, you have a snowball's chance in hell of changing anyone's mind.

To effect any real change or action, he says, you have to appeal to a person's emotions and senses. The best method is to tell a good story.

He uses failed US presidential candidate Al Gore as a case in point. As a presidential wannabe, Gore was hopeless because he could not connect with his audiences through his dry, wooden, unemotional speeches.

Gore, now the toast of the liberal elite and a Nobel Peace Prize-winning documentary film-maker, turned it all around with global warming and a slick Powerpoint presentation that jolted people out of their complacency about the plight of the planet, he says.

"Once you realise this is how people think and how they plan and how they decide and how they dream and how they hope and fear – if we think in stories, it becomes a criterion for all the other ways of communicating."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/4308124a6430.html

UK: Book News: December 4, 2007

THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF LEADERSHIP
By Stephen Denning

The book introduces the concept of narrative intelligence - an ability to understand and act and react agilely in the quicksilver world of interacting narratives.

It shows why this is key to the central task of leadership, what its dimensions are, and how you can measure it.

The book’s lucid explanations, vivid examples and practical tips are essential reading for chief executives, managers, change agents, politicians, teachers, parents - anyone who is setting out to the change the world.

Published by Jossey-Bass. ISBN: 978-0-7879-8789-3. 27.95 US dollars.
http://www.publicnet.co.uk/book-news/2007/12/04/the-secret-language-of-leadership/
PublicNet is the World Wide Web community created for everybody interested in the public sector and its management.

USA: Library Journal: December 2007

Behar, Howard with Janet Goldstein. It's Not About the Coffee: Leadership Principles from a Life at Starbucks. Portfolio. Jan. 2008. c.175p. index. ISBN 978-1-59184-192-0. $19.95.
Denning, Stephen. The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative. Jossey-Bass. Oct. 2008. 288p. index. ISBN 978-0-7879-8789-3. $27.95.
Strelecky, John P. The Big Five for Life: Leadership's Greatest Secret. St. Martin's. Jan. 2008. c.256p. ISBN 978-0-312-37814-1. $24.95. BUS

Live and learn: each of these books may define its topic as leadership, but open the covers and all commonality ends. Behar (former president, Starbucks International) lists ten basic leadership lessons, including building trust, being accountable, taking action, and daring to dream, illustrated by typical corporate anecdotes and “extra shots” of advice throughout. Like many before him, e.g., Joseph Michelli’s The Starbucks Experience and Howard Schultz’s Pour Your Heart into It, Behar offers a quickly paced, if not original, volume seeking to capitalize on the cultural cachet of Starbucks.

Corporate leadership coach Strelecky (The Why Café) offers another business/inspirational self-help parable, this time about the fictional character Thomas Derale, the “greatest leader in the world,” who happens to be dying. His favored employee and disciple learns Derale’s final lessons by discovering his own PFE (“purpose for existing,” originally defined in The Why Café) and learning to live according to his “Big Five for Life,” the five things you want to do before you die. Although the story starts to wear thin before its conclusion, Strelecky makes a heartfelt, if not unique, case that successful leaders are those who encourage others to find fulfillment.

Storytelling is also important for Denning (senior fellow, James MacGregor Burns Leadership Academy, Univ. of Maryland; The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling). At times, his treatise reads more like a public-speaking manual than one for “transformational” leaders, i.e., those who inspire positive change through effective communication. Although some readers might feel his emphasis on techniques such as getting your audience’s attention, eliciting desire for action, and reinforcing with reasons are too narrowly focused, Denning cohesively links the importance of narrative intelligence and telling stories to leadership success. He follows his own storytelling advice by opening with an account of Al Gore’s evolution from 2000 to 2006, as well as by offering clear and compelling explanations and drawing on a wide range of referenced sources. His book includes appendixes containing exercises and a self-test.

Behar’s and Strelecky’s books, solid but not particularly innovative, are recommended only for public libraries seeking to expand their business offerings.

Denning’s is recommended for public and academic collections owing to its more comprehensive linking of communication to successful leadership.—Sarah Statz Cords, Madison P.L., WI

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6510090.html

France: Les Inrockuptibles: October 9, 2007:

Number 619: “Il etait une fois (La Politique Aujourd’hui) by Sylvain Bourmeau

Go to http://www.stevedenning.com/Documents/LesInrockuptiblesOct07.html

Reviews To Come:

  • US: Leader to Leader Magazine article, March 2008
  • US: American Express Magazine, article, March 2008.
  • US/UK: Strategy & Leadership Magazine, review and article. March/April 2008

On-Line Coverage

  • October, 2007 – Op-ed News article: “An Inconvenient Truth For Democrats”,
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